This invention relates to a hinge assembly. The hinge assembly is particularly suited to use in gaming machines also referred to as slot machines, fruit machines or poker machines. In particular, the hinge assembly may be used to mount a belly door for a gaming machine.
A typical standard sized gaming machine comprises a relatively tall cabinet and a main door which swings open on hinges to allow access to the interior of the cabinet. The main door typically extends almost the entire length of the cabinet from top to bottom. In the middle of the door, there is usually a shelf area on which a number of control buttons are located for use by a player. Often, a bill acceptor is disposed beneath the shelf area and a slot is provided in the shelf area allowing players to feed notes into the bill acceptor. It is common to have a door attached to the main door beneath the shelf, which is commonly referred to as a xe2x80x9cbelly doorxe2x80x9d. The belly door allows access to the interior of the lower part of the gaming machine without the need to open the main door and more importantly displays artwork for the machine. Such artwork usually comprises a sheet of optical quality acrylic material on which a design identifying the game is screen printed. Typically, the artwork is edge lit by a fluorescent tube which is mounted in an assembly fixed to one vertical edge of the artwork.
In some gaming machines, two fluorescent light tubes are provided, one is mounted at the rear of the artwork in a horizontal position and another is mounted in a vertical position to the rear of the artwork. This arrangement produces uneven lighting with xe2x80x9chot spotsxe2x80x9d appearing when the front of the artwork is viewed. The main problem which arises is that the bill acceptor depends down from the shelf behind the belly door and this prevents a horizontally mounted fluorescent light bulb from extending from one side of the artwork to the other side. The tube may only extend part way. Because it is not possible to light the artwork between the artwork and the bill acceptor, there is typically a shadow behind the artwork where the bill acceptor is positioned and neither lighting system discussed above, solves this problem.
In the prior art the vertically mounted fluorescent light is enclosed in a C shaped chamber which is pivoted to a mount fixed to a vertical edge of the artwork. Because it is mounted to the edge of the artwork, the fluorescent light is also positioned close to one edge of the belly door and it is a difficult and fiddly process to pivot the chamber, remove the fluorescent light and replace it with another. Typically, it can take an engineer 15 minutes to change the artwork and fluorescent light tube.
The applicant""s co-pending PCT patent application entitled xe2x80x9clight chamber for gaming machinexe2x80x9d addresses the problems of lighting artwork by providing a light chamber. The present application relates to a novel hinge assembly which can be used to mount both the chamber, and a frame of the belly door to the main door of the gaming machine. However the particular hinge assembly of the present invention is not restricted to use on gaming machines and may have applications in other areas outside gaming machines.
Thus in accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a hinge assembly comprising:
a hinge pin, fixed to a first member;
an outer sleeve fixed to a second member, comprising first and second arcuate arms such that the sleeve is part-annular in cross-section defining a gap between opposing ends of the arms and wherein a support means is defined on an interior surface of the sleeve, below a top of the sleeve;
a part-annular pin element fixed to a third member, the pin being rotatably mounted inside the outer sleeve and wherein the pin defines a shoulder which in use rests on the support means defined by the outer sleeve, and wherein a second gap is defined between free ends of the pin element and wherein when the pin element is rotated to a particular orientation with respect to the outer sleeve, the gaps align to allow the pin element and outer sleeve to be simultaneously mounted around the hinge pin, with subsequent relative rotation of the pin element and outer sleeve preventing the pin element and outer sleeve from becoming disengaged from the hinge pin.
In the described embodiment below the first member is a main door for a gaming machine, the second member is a frame for a belly door of a gaming machine, and the third member is a chamber adapted to seal against the frame of the belly door.
The hinging arrangement described above, not only provides a means for hinging three members relative to each other, it also provides a simple method of hinge construction and assembly by the alignment of the two elongate gaps for mounting over a hinge pin.
Typically, to avoid the hinge assembly accidentally falling apart, the arrangement of the second and thirds members relative to each other which aligns the gaps, would be one which would not normally occur in practice.